Google Maps will now show location of potholes as well

Bengaluru: As our city roads are filled with potholes and their history shows they remain open for years without getting any attention for civic agencies, Google wants to ‘use’ them for helping people to move from one place to other.

In next version of Google maps, location of potholes will be shown, the direction would be given to people keeping the location of the pothole as reference.

While speaking to us on this new feature, Google India head, Rajan Anand said, “We did a study in Bengaluru. Most of the city public face two problems, one is traffic and second is how to go from one point to another point in most efficient manner. On traffic, we informed people in Bengaluru to check the traffic density in the app before they start. It is not helping much as traffic is well distributed throughout the city and throughout the day”.

“But the other problem is, most of the roads are one-ways and traffic police constantly divert people due to some VVIP visit or road repair work. People tend to take longer route even if they are filled with traffic as they feel these are the familiar roads they need to take to reach their destination. What the new app will do is to open up newer options. It will give you accurate information, like after that big pothole, take right or you will see eight potholes of minimum 1 meter diameter, then you need to take left”, said Mr. Anand.

Mr. Anand said nothing is constant in life. “Though closure of potholes happens rarely, new ones are created even if there is 0.2mm of rain. There would be real-time update of the app from satellite images. So, commuters need not worry. If an area has more potholes, the app will help in giving better direction”, said Mr. Anand.

Due to inconsistent rain in various parts of the city, now Jayanagar has gone ahead of Indiranagar in terms of number of potholes. “Due to plenty of potholes, Jayanagar people can track the app & reach their places quickly and we will struggle. We have submitted a complaint to BBMP asking to do ‘something’. We do not want to lose our tag of being number one”, said Indiranagar councilor while speaking to us.